Tools for designers, product engineers, manufacturing professionals and other innovators collaborating on product development. If you are responsible for rapid authoring, analysis and validation of products and processes, then click here to find how ENOVIA can help.

ENOVIA Designer Central for CATIA V5

With ENOVIA Designer Central for CATIA V5, companies can collect, track, protect, and deliver CATIA V5 design data seamlessly to business processes within the enterprise.

Managed work-in-process (WIP) model data supports the entire product development process by giving early visibility to design information, and allows the enterprise to collaborate before final product decisions are made. The immersive integration capabilities allow users to browse, query, check-in and check-out drawings, parts, assembly structures, and other items directly from within the CATIA V5 session. Access status can be checked directly from the CATIA tree, which provides users visual confirmation directly from their design session.

With ENOVIA Designer Central for CATIA V5 users are able to:

Provide access to other stakeholders across the company (product engineering, manufacturing, purchasing, etc.) to design data in real time throughout the entire product lifecycle

Have project leaders create team workspace folders, defining access level for members and making design information easy to find

Provide collaboration capabilities such as workflow, online meetings, subscriptions, and discussion threads making it possible for dispersed design teams to collaborate productively on the same design

Reduce ramp up production lead times by providing component information to your supply chain earlier in the development process through preliminary BOMs

CATIA V5 Data Management

With ENOVIA Designer Central for CATIA V5, companies can collect, track, protect and deliver CATIA V5 design data seamlessly to business processes within the enterprise. Managed work-in-process (WIP) model data supports the entire product development process by giving early visibility to design information, and allows the enterprise to collaborate before final product decisions are made. The ENOVIA toolbar provides users quick access to frequently used commands through visual icons. The immersive integration capabilities allow users to browse, query, check-in and check-out drawings, parts, assembly structures and other items directly from within the CATIA V5 session. Access status can be checked directly from the CATIA tree, providing users visual confirmation without accessing additional windows.

Good Performances even on WAN

DC5 can be used around the world with a single repository for metadata, as network latency has very little impact on performance. This is key for globalized product development business processes.

Manage CATIA V5 Multi-Model Links (MML)

As part of the ENOVIA Open/Save operations, the integration will recognize contextual and geometric links. Management and display of the links helps the user understand what components are referenced and how they are used in the assembly.

Local Directory Administration (DLNAME) Support

CAD administrators can set options to recognize specific storage directories for each user community and the projects they are working on. Support of DLNAME eliminates the need to have users remember or use unmanaged local disk area.

Unique Identifier (UUID) Recognition

Unique Identifiers are recorded in each CATIA V5 file to ensure that the file that exists in the ENOVIA system is also the same file the user is trying to check in after modification. UUID’s are compared on check-in to be sure that the same file is going to the proper revision and version.

CATIA V5 Tree Status

From within the CATIA V5 application, the user can see icons in the CATIA V5 model tree showing the specific status of any given design he currently has in session as compared to what is stored in ENOVIA. The icons indicate lock status, which helps the user understand if they have write access to any given file.

CATIA V5 CGR & 3D XML Generation

ENOVIA Designer Central for CATIA V5 allows the user to create CGR or 3D XML as part of the check in operation. These additional formats can then be viewed by 3DLive or 3D XML Player, which allows users other than designers to visualize part information.

Product Driven Design and EBOM Synchronization

Companies that have chosen to utilize ENOVIA® Engineering Central™ can now closely associate the CAD designs with engineering parts. During the initial creation of CATIA V5 designs, users can associate engineering parts to their CATIA V5 model templates before CAD work begins. An optional process allows the users to select an existing engineering part as the defining name of the CATIA component being checked in. Either approach allows CATIA V5 structures to be dictated from the engineering product designs. As the design process progresses, changes between the model structure and EBOM are inevitable. At any point in the process, the two structures can be synchronized. As part of this synchronization process, additional metadata such as the CATIA version, component mass, bounding box and design moment and center of inertia are transferred to the associated engineering part. A visual display graphically depicts what changes/updates are to occur before the transaction is committed so users have the ability to verify that the actions to be taken are expected and to solve any discrepancies.

Quick Access

ENOVIA Designer Central for CATIA V5 has been designed to allow users to manage their CAD files with minimal effort. The immersive user interface allows users to remain in the context of the CAD application while performing daily routine tasks that interface with ENOVIA. Users have the option to bypass additional menus during checkout operations using default parameters. In order to encourage users to frequently update the system with their latest design versions, ENOVIA Designer Central for CATIA V5 maintains a list of recently accessed designs that users can quickly reference for future download. In addition, designers can search from the CAD tool for the most recently accessed designs. Checkout is available directly from the display. Users are also encouraged to save their latest design modifications to the database by executing the “Quick Checkin” function. ENOVIA Designer Central for CATIA V5 automatically recognizes the new and modified designs and automatically updates the database with the new design versions ensuring that other team members have ready access to the latest available component design changes. ENOVIA Designer Central for CATIA V5 automatically assigns the appropriate type designation to CATIA designs, and prompts the user to execute a local save of the design file before saving into ENOVIA. This ensures that the new local designs are production designs and not test or widget parts used in the design creation process.

Advanced CATIA V5 Structure Management

Utilization of the common product structure editor within ENOVA Designer Central CATIA V5 allows users to generate new structures from existing designs stored in the ENOVIA database. Users can manipulate work-in-process structures through query of the database to find the latest available component or suitable replacements for designs in their active structure. The structure modifications are made in a markup state until the user commits the changes. These new/modified structures may then be checked out in CATIA V5 for further modification. It is also common that structure modifications are required that do not affect form, fit or function. These types of design changes typically do not require an official ECO but still require strict management. An advanced user designated by a special role may make released CAD BOM changes without the benefit of an associated ECO.

Create and Manage Design Data Workspaces from the CAD tool

ENOVIA Designer Central for CATIA V5 allows users to create workspaces for project teams or for simple, ad hoc collaboration. From the native design application, designers can easily access data that is vaulted in the highly scalable ENOVIA® Collaboration Platform. Users can create folders within each workspace with access privileges for secure content sharing with other team members. Administrators may assign default or “Home” folders for each user. Pre-defined folders may also be accessed through a pull-down menu. Local workspace management on the users’ desktop allows users to easily compare their work-in-progress to the master designs in ENOVIA. Operations such as “delete”, “move” and “copy” are part of the local workspace management feature set. Subscriptions allow designers to be notified when a design of interest is checked-in by another team member. ENOVIA Designer Central for CATIA V5 keeps track of the relationship between associated documents, such as schematics and layout, so traceability is never lost even when working with third-party designers.

Notification

Rapid review of change ideas leads to faster design throughput. Users of ENOVIA Designer Central for CATIA V5 have the ability to subscribe to a design and set events for notification. When any user changes a design in a work-in-process environment, all users that have subscribed to that design are automatically notified of the change, reducing last minute mistakes. Design change reports include status of new and modified designs as well as designs that have been renamed.

Meeting capabilities

ENOVIA Designer Central for CATIA V5’s online meeting capability enables design teams to review and collaborate on design data in real time. Discussion threads and markups are captured as part of the meeting and can be referenced at any time in the future.

Workflow

ENOVIA Designer Central for CATIA V5’s workflow (or route) capability enables a designer to obtain feedback when an online meeting is not possible. Routes can be defined with serial or parallel tasks for review and/or approval of design content.

Visualization

Having the ability to work on designs independent of the authoring tools improves communication and reduces the likelihood of late changes in the design process. ENOVIA Designer Central for CATIA V5 includes a web-based visualization component. This capability supports a variety of document formats as well at native file formats, or for larger data sets, can be sent to a background process for translation in anticipation of future use. No files are downloaded to the client side, ensuring a secure work environment. Thumbnail images are also available in certain displays to aid users in distinguishing different versions of the same design.

CATIA Access within ENOVIA

In order to facilitate the opening of a design found while in ENOVIA, users can directly start CATIA from the ENOVIA user interface. Once CATIA is active, the user simply selects a design for checkout.

Rapid Application Configured Environment (R.A.C.E.) Setup Compliancy

When ENOVIA Designer Central for CATIA V5 is deployed along with ENOVIA® VPM Team Central™ or ENOVIA® VPM Central™ using the available ENOVIA Rapid Application Configured Environment (RACE) Setup, the applications can be used immediately in production. This eliminates the need for specific customizations and reduces the time and effort for enterprise deployments. For more details on the RACE setup, please refer to the ENOVIA® VPM Central Business Fact Sheet.

CATIA V5 data accessible from VPM V6 Applications

CATIA V5 data managed in V6 with ENOVIA Designer Central can be searched and navigated seamlessly directly in ENOVIA VPM Central or ENOVIA VPM Team Central. CATIA V5 and CATIA V6 designs can be federated into one single global product definition thus enabling efficient downstream design processes for a comprehensive review or even process planning in V6.